The strike was meant to break the loose hold I had on my temper, to force me to expose myself for the venomous creature she believed me to be and to get this over and done with, but it had a wholly different affect.
My blood burned at the contact of her flesh against mine, my heart leaping and my anger and frustration with her mixing with the unwanted lust I’d been feeling from the very first moment I’d laid my eyes on her.
She’d crept into my head with that first look, had slipped into my dreams with the first hateful word, and had lodged herself beneath my skin like a splinter I couldn’t draw free. This girl consumed me from one moment to the next, my emotions flaring between hatred, desire, fury, lust, and everything else besides, but there was one thing they never did and that was turn from her. She was there, inside my head day in and day out, and the feeling of her palms smacking against my skin was like a bucket of cold water crashing down over my head and forcing me to face what I’d been trying to hide from for far too long.
I snapped, stepping close and shoving her in return, my steps hounding her as her back collided with the rock wall behind her, and my body caged her there, making certain she couldn’t run from me anymore as my eyes burned into hers and the stunning green of them devoured me. She saw me. I felt it. Felt her, all around and lodged in my skin and only finding her way deeper every time I saw her. I didn’t understand it, didn’t know what it meant, only that if I didn’t do something about it, I knew that this feeling would burn me from the inside out and consume every part of me which still fought to resist it.
Roxy glared at me, raising her chin defiantly, a dare in her eyes which I was helpless not to answer as my gaze fell to her mouth and I lost all sense of control.
I snatched a handful of her hair in my fist, tugging on it hard enough to draw her head back, bearing her to me as my heart galloped in my chest and I crushed her back against the wall.
This was madness, insanity, a reckless kind of bedlam, and yet I felt like if I didn’t surrender to it, I was going to shatter into a thousand pieces which would scatter on the wind and never again fit back together. A burning, possessive need rolled through me and I broke, giving in to it and falling into the frantic pounding of my heart as it took what it had been aching for.
A gasp parted her full lips and my mouth collided with hers in the next breath, taking what I knew she wasn’t offering. My anger turning to passion, my need to punish her becoming a need to own her instead.
Roxy drew in a breath which devoured my own as I sank my tongue between her lips, getting her to part them for me as the heat of her body blazed against mine, and all I could be certain of was that I needed more.